OAKLAND — If the 2019 NBA Finals were an action movie, we would be most of the way through the first act.

For the purposes of this analogy, the Toronto Raptors would be the protagonist, a ragtag group of plucky underdogs facing almost impossible odds against a powerful enemy, in this case a Golden State Warriors team in its fifth straight championship series, and with three titles already to its credit.

But the Raptors have survived the first assault. Depending on which genre of movie we are going with, they have beaten back the orcs, repelled the first wave of soldiers, or managed to pilot their rickety ship through the asteroid field.

And yet, danger lurks for the heroes. Just as they are celebrating a surprising early success, the scene cuts to show what else is in store. It’s a giant cave troll, or a new piece of super-artillery, or maybe a space dragon. Oh, the horrors that could yet befall Nick Nurse and his motley band of rebels!

It’s Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant is the dragon.

As much as the Raptors have traded blows with the champs, splitting the first two Finals games and outplaying them for the majority of both, the spectre of Durant still looms. It may have been fashionable to proclaim that the Warriors had unlocked something new and dangerous when Durant was injured in the fifth game of the second round against Houston, given that Golden State had won five straight without him, but Game 1 of the Finals put the lie to that, and not just because the Raptors won.

In that opener, Toronto showed off their length and their athleticism, scoring effectively at one end, which allowed them to set up their defence on the other. The Raptors’ offence wasn’t as good in Game 2, but with the exception of the third-quarter blitzkrieg that the Warriors threw at them, they made Golden State work for their baskets. After two games in the Eastern Conference Finals, the Raptors didn’t look like they had any answers for Giannis Antetokounmpo and his army of shooters. There is no such feeling with the Finals. The Raptors don’t seem overwhelmed, and a couple of buckets to slow that 18-0 Warriors run to open the second half on Sunday night might well have made all the difference.

But then there is Durant. To understand the silliness of the argument that the Warriors might be better off without him, one only has to look at the past two Finals. His MVP award last year came after he averaged 28 points, 11 rebounds, seven assists and two blocks per game in the Warriors’ four-game sweep over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Impressive enough in the broad sense, Durant was at his most deadly at key moments. In Game 3, with the Cavs still within three points and under a minute to go, Durant took the inbounds pass, dribbled up the court, waited for the shot clock to wind down and, rather than make a move, simply rose up and drilled a 32-foot three-pointer. Ballgame. It was almost the exact shot he made a year earlier, also in Game 3, and which also gave the Warriors a 3-0 series lead that effectively clinched. In those 2017 Finals, his average numbers were even more ridiculous: 35 points, eight rebounds, five assists.

Golden State Warriors Kevin Durant arrives for practice on June 1, 2019 in Toronto.Jack Boland/Postmedia Network

This playoff season, before his injury, Durant was scoring at will again. He had 95 points combined in the final two games of the first round, and in the eight games prior to hurting his calf in the second round against the Rockets, he averaged just under 39 points a night. All of that happened, though, before Kawhi hit The Shot, and then outplayed Giannis, and meanwhile on the West side the Warriors didn’t lose with Durant out of the lineup and reminded everyone of how fun they were before he arrived to make a great team patently unfair. He is, simply, an incredible scorer, and it’s hard to see how the Raptors could account for him while still trying to hold Golden State’s other weapons at bay. That isn’t a knock on Toronto: no team has managed to do it in the playoffs since Durant came to the Bay Area.

No one knows if Durant will see action in these Finals, but he could in theory practice with his team on Tuesday and then be active for Game 3. He could also work his way up to game speed over the next few days and return on Friday for Game 4. He might also find that the strained calf doesn’t respond well, and keep on sitting out. There is the matter of an uncertain future and a pending nine-figure contract to consider. The Raptors might also hope that if he comes back, his return disrupts a team that has managed just fine in the month that he has been out. That seems like wishful thinking. The guy is a scoring machine, and the absolute best place for him, from a Toronto perspective, is on the bench.

Golden State coach Steve Kerr has refused to be baited into saying how Durant would help them in the Finals, and the ways in which they miss him on the court. “It doesn’t matter until he’s out there,” Kerr said last week.

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